


a kind of haunting in reverse

by crowaii



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, They get better, Yes someone dies, anyway guardians must be super creepy from a civilian perspective, but like it's destiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 20:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16878744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowaii/pseuds/crowaii
Summary: It’s been following them for weeks.It doesn’t hide, but it never approaches them either. Sometimes, it lags behind; it likes to scan old things, he’s noticed, the two halves of its body whirling in different directions as its sensors sweep in methodical arcs.----------Guardians aren't born, they're made.





	a kind of haunting in reverse

**Author's Note:**

> Sprung from lots of late night conversations with my long suffering friends about how guardians are very fucked up, just like, conceptually? and they must be at least a _little_ creepy from a civilian perspective.

It’s been following them for weeks.

 

It doesn’t hide, but it never approaches them either. Jun sights it regularly as they trudge through marshes and underbrush. At night he catches glimpses of its little blue optical sensor, out beyond the edges of their camp. It moves when they move, rests when they rest.

Sometimes, it lags behind; it likes to scan old things, he’s noticed, the two halves of its body whirling in different directions as its sensors sweep in methodical arcs.

Half the stuff it scans is rusted or decayed almost beyond recognition. A red and white sign, resting against a row of smashed store windows. Boxy yellow plastic sprouting stripped wires out its back. A gentle hummock overgrown with marsh grass and shot through with spears of broken off ribs. The spiked purple flowers that grow rampant in the lowlands.

Regardless, it’s always caught up to them by the next morning. Robots don’t exactly need to sleep, Jun supposes.

\---------------------

Yana hates it. The fifth day after it found them she’d spent the better part of the morning throwing rocks at it until Li Lan had told her they needed to go. Still, Yana kept it up even as they walked.

Most of her shots went wide, but she hit it enough--or at least hit that protective electromagnetic field it summoned enough--that eventually it started keeping a distance from them. They still caught glimpses of it when they moved through somewhere open, or late at night when the Traveler wasn’t too bright.

It resumed its original distance after a while, but at this point a strange little chunk of pre-Collapse junk was the least of their worries.

\-----------------

The problem with being a pair of scrawny teenagers leading around half a dozen kids is that a lot of people think you’re easy pickings. The even bigger problem is that generally they’re right.

 

They’re not totally vulnerable, of course. Li Lan’s got the rifle and they have two other pistols they pass around as needed. Everyone except Tamir--who’s six or seven or maybe a very a scrawny kind of eight--gets a knife, too. Still, they’re a bunch of kids. It’s rough, to say the least.

 

As a general rule, they avoid other people, especially big groups, even when it means long detours down mud-slick goat trails that leave them scratched and bruised. If it’s a particularly dangerous looking party, usually they hunker down for a day or two and pass the time by scavenging in ones and twos.

 

This time, it’s a group of men and women in patchwork armor carrying scout rifles. They look too organized for bandits. Everyone agrees they’re probably a local militia; there are some towns that are just bad news. There’s a settlement maybe a day’s walk east Jun remembers from traveling with his dad, and he figures it’s probably them that took a turn for the dangerous.

 

They lay low for two days, and it’s the longest they’ve gone without seeing their hanger-on since they first spotted it, which is stranger than any of them expected. It also stretches their supplies to the limit, and eventually Li Lan’s forced to admit they need to do a supply run.

Jun remembers the area well enough that he thinks he knows a few places to start looking for game, so the two of them grab Li Lan’s rifle, one of the pistols, and a pair of knives and head out, strange robot trailing behind them.

 

About an hour out they spot the first alien Jun’s ever seen.

 

They drop quickly into the brush, Li Lan’s hand between his shoulder blades pressing him down so hard with he nearly swallows a mouthful of dirt. His pistol is still in the holster but he thinks he can reach the knife at his belt if he’s careful.

 

He’d heard about the aliens from his dad and his uncle, but everyone agreed they weren’t in the business of attacking settlements, even as an unspoken “yet” hung in the air. They were known to pick off smaller homesteads and travelers though. And no one had ever known one to be friendly.

The thing carries a powerful looking rifle in two of its four arms, eyes shining out from under its hood. It hefts its weapon, working its way between trees carefully. The little robot is still nowhere to be found.

 

Next to him, Li Lan puts a finger to her lips, her other hand sliding the knife from her waist. She raises herself carefully out of the underbrush. She throws the knife, just like he’s seen her do a hundred times before.

The thing turns, half-screams, half-hisses something, shoots.

 

The knife gets the thing in what passes for its throat.

 

Li Lan goes down.

 

For a moment all Jun can see is her blood splattered on the tree behind them. Then there is an answer scream-hiss from somewhere further away and Jun is scrabbling for his pistol as he spins to find the source. He fires once, twice, three times. The second alien goes down, wheezing as it exhales strange gas. Jun raises the gun again, scanning for more, trying to keep the shaking from his hands.

 

Silence.

 

Then, more cries somewhere in the distance.

 

He turns back to Li Lan, only to spin away immediately so he can throw up. Part of her jaw is missing, along with everything else below the ear on the right side of her face. Her left hand is curled around the grip of her rifle, and Jun thinks she must have been reaching for it even as the thing shot her.

 

There’s a soft blue light sweeping back and forth over Li Lan, pausing over the ruined half of her face, and Jun looks up to find the little robot staring at him, twisting and untwisting.

 

“You should go.”

 

He should. Jun knows, distantly, that he should take Li Lan’s rifle and get out of here before more of them come. Instead, he asks what he thinks they should have asked weeks ago.

 

“Why have you been following us?”

 

It tilts its whole frame as if considering him.

 

“Not you. Her.”

 

It should be strange to hear it speaking after so many weeks. It’s not.

 

“You knew she was going to die.”

 

He hears gunfire in the distance. The little robot resumes scanning Li Lan, more quickly now, and Jun struggles to put words to the betrayal welling up inside him.

 

“If you don’t leave now, you are going to die too.”

It’s right. He needs to get back to the others, but he can’t seem to focus on that fact.

 

“What are you?” It’s another question he should have asked a long time ago.

 

Apparently satisfied, the robot stops scanning Li Lan and begins to expand, it’s points detaching and creating that blue bubble matrix.

 

“She’s a Guardian, and I’m her Ghost. Now run.”

 

.

.

.

.

.

The next time Jun sees her, he is forty-seven and she doesn’t look a day past nineteen. Doesn’t look a day past the day she died, but by now he’s heard of Guardians and Ghosts and knows that that’s how it all works.

Still, seeing her, whole and healthy and wielding a rifle like she was born with it is a gut punch of a thing.

 

It’s a Fallen incursion, and he knows a lot more about them, too; he wasn’t there for Twilight Gap, but there’s no shortage of Fallen ketches these days even afterwards.

Their Kell is down and the Fallen are scattered and retreating, but the whole situation still makes him want to grab her hand and run, even as he knows she won’t recognize him--knows it for a fact, her gaze has already slid right over him half a dozen times.

Jun knows what a Guardian is. Knows it means she’s not human, at least not in the way that bleeds and dies and stays down. Everyone knows Guardians come back from just about near everything. But.

 

But.

 

But it doesn’t change the fact that she’s still wearing the face of a girl who did bleed, and die and stay down. Because everyone also knows that Guardians aren’t whoever they were before.

 

A parting shot slices through her shoulder and she barely even flinches, just raises her own gun and sends back a cluster of shots in return. Another tags her hip and then her Ghost is out, twisting into space from nothingness and setting to work.

 

When it finishes, it scans the surroundings, pausing when it catches sight of him. After a moment, it tilts its plates in something Jun can’t help thinking of as a nod before rippling out of existence once again.


End file.
